On New Year’s Eve, Bulgarians1) perform fortunetelling tricks with leaves and water glasses. Finns have been known to do the same with molten2) tin and buckets. In the lower Rhine, it was once customary3) to play cards frenziedly4) until the stroke of midnight. The Greeks, too, play cards and sing songs about Saint Basil；and the Belgians and Swiss remember Sylvester with the custom of calling the last person to awaken in a household on New Year’s Eve morning, man or woman, a “Sylvester.” An old custom in Madrid involved standing at the foot of the Puerta del Sol, in front of the Department of the Interior, where a huge clock strikes the hours, and to swallow, at the stroke of twelve, twelve grapes one after the other. The Viennese counterpart was the custom of releasing live pigs in restaurants at midnight, at which point the diners raced around chasing them. More sedate Austrians call New Year’s Eve“smoke night, ”and content themselves with ritually5) purifying homes and storehouses with incense6) and holy water. Latvians hold masquerade7) parties, and Rumanians sing a carol concerning Emperor Trajan and a bull.
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